


Not His Father

by Rifa



Category: Hades (Video Game 2018)
Genre: Abusive Parents, Blood and Gore, Blood and Violence, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Childhood Trauma, Combat, During Canon, Gen, Parent-Child Relationship, Past Abuse, Past Violence, Temporary Character Death, Tough Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-10
Updated: 2020-10-10
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:55:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26923228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rifa/pseuds/Rifa
Summary: Hades, Lord of the Underworld, sends his rebellious son back to his House for a third time.Character study and writing experiment.
Comments: 11
Kudos: 126





	Not His Father

**Author's Note:**

> You know I couldnt keep my dirty pagan hands off of this.
> 
> The violence is very graphic and Zagreus dies but that's normal for him. I tagged "abusive parents" but its the canon typical Hades as well as him reflecting on his own very violent childhood. 
> 
> Enjoy!

  
  


The surface was cold, frigid as the dry winds brushed over Hades’ cloak and beard. What colour the mortal realm had faded as the God filled it with his presence. The residual heat and miasma of the Underworld clung to him, his unbridled power bending the mortal world to submission as he stood and waited for his son.

It was impossible to not think on the last time he had come to the surface. When the forgotten stone of the temple was covered not in frost but in the roots and stems of larkspur, twisted sweet iris petals, and the scent of the crocus. His brothers on Olympus would go on to say he broke the earth open, his sister would claim he had stolen something precious. But he had done no such thing, not that it mattered any longer. 

The winter wind was punishment, a greeting to his weary heart. But the temporary death that hung in the mortal air was not welcoming, nor familiar. Surely there were eyes upon him, even in the dead of winter the woods were filled with nymphs, naiads, and satyrs. The animals, the birds and plants all had Gods they answered to. The croaking call of a black bird echoed in the silence as it fled Hades’ shadow, shrilly crying to the God of Light that a darkness had risen. Only the stone, hard stone underfoot would remain silent for him as they had the millennia it had taken for them to rise from the bowels of Tartarus up to the mortal surface. 

Even alone, Hades had audience with all of Olympus. He needed to finish this quickly before the boy would embarrass him and his steeled reputation as the King of the Underworld.

Hades felt Zagreus nearing the surface as one would feel an ant crawling across their skin. He knew his brethren on Olympus were eager to set their claws into him, to claim him and his loyalty for their own means. But they were occupied with feasting, bloodshed, sex, and “wisdom”, they were not waiting here at the gates. Hades needed to right his spawn. It was his responsibility.

“I’m back,  _ father,” _ Zagreus spat the words at Hades’ back. The heat that burned off the soles of his feet melted the snow as he dragged himself forward. He reeked of  _ blood. _ Metallic, rich as the raw iron Hephestus would reap from Hades’ efforts. 

“My brothers and my sisters and myself,” Hades’ voice rippled the air, unfamiliar to the energy he carried from his very core. For a brief second he considered whether invoking his distant family would summon them all the faster, but he had a point to make, one he regretted not beating into the boy earlier. “We, too, wanted to slay our parents-”

“And you succeeded,” Zagreus cut him off. Prattled on the legend that had come from Hades and his kin destroying Cronus and the titans after. Foolish, of course the boy focused on the grim remains and had dismissed the rest of the tale. 

Was it Hades’ fault that his boy had not the context to understand the beginning of his line, the source of what meagre power he had inherited? The red-blooded spawn could not fathom the terror that coloured the universe when it was still in its infancy, the pain and suffering Hades had been born into, the ramifications.

Zagreus had to be corrected. His hubris could not go unpunished. Hades had been lenient, despite the boy’s rampant rebellion and shortcomings. Soft, as he could not look at the child’s green eye without  _ remembering. _ Holding the boy at a distance, tasking him as he had his other underlings in his realm had only brought the young God a slothful conviction. Spoiled  _ and _ stupid, he reflected all of Hades’ weaknesses back at him.

Even now, Hades was weak, for he looked over the blood-stained and minute form of his son and almost  _ sympathized _ with the bastard the poets called Hades’ father. Zagreus’ grandfather would have swallowed him without a second thought, silenced him in the most effective manner. Hades was not his father, never would be, but his boy could not walk from his realm with his hubris as a crown.

“You think me cruel,” Hades answered his blood-stained child, measuring his anger, holding it all in his taut muscles. “Yet know  _ nothing _ of cruelty. But, here, you want something to hate, then have it.”

Hades readied his spear. Zagreus hefted Aegis before him, the shield’s growling maw betraying the ancient power sealed within. It was not the same shield his brother had held high over him aeons past, but it served as a reminder. The boy may be strong enough to crawl his way to the surface but he was not strong enough to wield the infernal arm as Zeus once had. 

A boy playing warrior with dusty relics belonging to an absent family who would never accept him as he is. It would be tragic if it wasn’t so pitiful. The fact that he had been beaten twice before, every bone splintered and his blood seeping through the snow and retreated back to the closest depths, and had returned again told Hades that he had learned nothing.

Hades had not been an effective instructor, but he would correct that the only way he knew how.    
  
Zagreus should be thankful that his father only broke him in ways that could be repaired. He should be thankful that his body would piece itself back together after slipping through the infernal river. Where ichor strengthened Hades, blood served to keep Zagreus closer to mortals, unending but born to bleed.

The boy had at least learned to hold the shield fast, to brace and bend at the knees. His stance echoed the myrmidons’ rallying cries, thousands of men who would eventually fall no matter how strong they held the line. Hades tested his resolve and the shield answered with power not its own, golden light shining where Hades’ spear pierced. Salt and earth met Hades’ nose- no, olive blossom.  _ Athena. _

What other Gods had sought to undermine his efforts? Must he challenge all of Olympus and travel the seas and hills to slaughter every demigod, every nymph and witch until they were all under his domain as well? What use would the Goddess of Wisdom have with this brainless, witless child? What did she see that she could turn?

Hades stepped into the darkness, letting the cloak of Nyx’s essence envelop him. The arid chill of the surface fell away and he was  _ home _ for a brief moment, stepping out to deliver a blow to Zagreus’ unguarded back.

Blood. Mortal filth. Surely even a day on the surface would have the boy’s very spirit tarnished with the miasma the world wrought in the Gods’ shadows. But he wouldn’t care, would he? The boy was too much like his mother, a wilting flower that yearned for Helios’ light since birth. Should the boy feel the embrace of that warm light, he would be lost to Hades forever. 

Zagreus flinched, Hades’ spear firm between his brittle bones. The boy was slow, unused to the march of time up here beyond the yawning expanse of death and decay. Hades had been born from the womb of this earth, confined within a flesh prison, he knew how to step between the mortal seconds and make them bend to his will. Zagreus would too, if he allowed his father to teach him in the ways a father teaches a son. 

The only way he might learn. Hades pulled his spear from Zagreus’ back. His wound a fountain of liquid life and mortality. It was little wonder why Thanatos had been so ineffective in blocking his way, his son was a walking contradiction. A divine joke between the living and the dead. Death responded to him as Life would have, with a deep, cloying curiosity and fascination. No matter. Hades would give his son another taste of death and rebirth, as many times as it would take.

The boy retaliated, as expected, charging Hades as if he were the minotaur beast. Hades let the blow meet him, revelling in the gritted teeth, the sweating brow of his boy as he smashed the legendary shield against him. He fought like a cornered wolf pup, eager for his mother’s teat and gnawing with his milk-teeth. The fight was unfair, but it was honest. Truthful, a lesson that could only be taught with defeat.

Hades swung his spear, its razor’s edge slicing the very air, cutting the stone around them into ribbons. At least the stones took Hades’ lesson with dignity, falling silently and crumbling into dust. They would not reform to challenge their place, despite the millennia it took them to reach the surface. Zagreus could learn from them.    
  
The boy had darted away, his flame-licked feet propelled by the unseen influence of Hermes. What other boons had the boy gotten his greedy fingers on? Zagreus wasn’t the only one who had others to call on, but unlike him, Hades did not need to beseech the other Gods for power. His subjects rose to his call, shades and long exalted warriors tainting the earth as they arrived to earn their Lord’s favour. 

Zagreus cut them down as quickly as they came, revealing the power he had gathered. Wine-scented mists, the wild howling of forest creatures, the bloodied ancient blades of a thousand wars. They all rose and poured off Zagreus as if he were a ship rocking over the waves of the Gods’ influences in their storm. The boy had no idea what he was meddling with, the delicate structures that were being built around him now that the Olympians had their sights on him.

Hades was the only authority that the boy needed to bow down to, the lord of the house he was born and raised in, the house that he would  _ not _ be leaving. Hades stepped into the embrace of darkness and met his son on the other side, his mismatched eyes wide in surprise as Hades tore Aegis from his hands and tossed it aside.   
  
“Enough, boy,” Hades ran his spear through the godling. Penetrating through his stomach and out the other side. Zagreus gagged on his own blood, his scarred hands met the spear’s shaft to hold it in place. “Return to the house, stop this childish rebellion, and take your place.”

“I-” Zagreus’ voice cracked under the pressure. His attempt to wrestle the spear from Hades’ strength was in vain. Hades’ spear cut a wound that would not close and it took only one step to pin the boy to the earth like an insect.    
  
The boy winced in pain, bent backwards, gripping the spear to hold himself from falling deeper. His flame-licked feet slipped in the melting snow, the gifts from his distant kin fleeting, slipping away as he lost his will to fight. Slowly, dripping away with his blood as it coloured the snow beneath him. 

“Father-!” Zagreus gasped as Hades let go of the spear, letting his boy balance where he was cut through. His arms shook from the effort, his head fell back as he panted and gasped. He suffered unlike a God, tormented in his endless cycle of hubris and failure. Embarrassing, but necessary. 

“I have given you all a father can give,” Hades intoned as he pulled one of Zagreus’ arms away from the spear and held it in his fingers. He pulled and watched as his boy’s bones splintered and cracked. The boy did not scream as he had the previous time Hades had corrected him like this, instead he gritted his teeth and endured. Hades was almost proud. “More than your  _ mother, _ she sacrificed you in her selfish abandonment. I would not abandon you.”

The thought of it invoked an image of his own mother, head bowed and submissive as she handed his brothers and sisters and himself from her womb to their father’s cruel hands. She had surrendered her motherhood, watched as each child was twisted and chewed by gnawing blunt teeth, pulled down into the blackest darkness and acid prison within Cronus. A man so terrified his children would cut him to pieces as he had done to his own father that he consumed all he begot. 

Hades was not Cronus. No. He would not imprison his son, he would not attempt to destroy him as Cronus had done to him. Zagreus could run all he liked, he could crawl his way towards the surface as Daedalus’ son had soared towards the sun. Hades would always be here to return him home, to make sure he knew he was wanted, that he had a place by his father’s side.

Hades took his son’s other arm and snapped it as well, rendering his boy immobile as a flightless bird. The godling was sinking on the spear now, his body mere flesh to its rendering. The blood did not stop pouring from him, making his body a feast for the wolves and his blood a wine the bacchanal would bathe in. The boy was naive to the ways of the world beyond their realm, the intentions and predations of the Gods he thought would embrace him as family.   
  
“I am the only family you have, boy,” Hades held Zagreus’ head between his fingers, knowing if he squeezed too tightly his skull would rip forth like a pit from an olive. “Your place is not here on the surface and your  _ mother _ is not here waiting for you. Invite no more hubris upon yourself, stupid boy.”

Zagreus opened his blood filled mouth but was silenced as Hade closed his fist around his sons’ small head. His skin and hair pressed to his palms as bone cracked between his knuckles. Within a second, Zagreus was nothing but blood. Thick and congealed as Hades opened his hand and collected his spear. The red viscera that would be reborn as his son again dark and sinking in the white snow. Hades sent his spear and cloak back to his House and with a glance, the stones of the temple came back together as if nothing had disturbed them.

The surface was quiet again. The forgotten temple the only witness to the godling Zagreus’  _ third _ rise to the surface The creatures that had reclaimed this corner of the earth would whisper that the Lord of Hades had stepped upon the soil and cursed it, that a god’s blood had fallen here but could not be found. The gossiping nymphs and erotes would titter to one another like songbirds, repeating and echoing the story until it was grandiose enough for the playwrights to have whispered to them by the muses. 

No matter. Once Zagreus learned his lesson and took his place in Hades his name would disappear from mortal’s lips, his existence forgotten by the Olympians when they grow tired of waiting for him to appear. Hades turned to step back into the Temple of Styx and stopped-   
  
A figure perched on one of the broken pillars, head in his palm as he grinned down at Hades, a glint in his eye as the wings on his sandals and hat quivered from the Lord’s attention. He snapped a wave with two fingers, “Lord Hades,” His voice carried, reverberating inside of Hades’ head, “Shall I keep this from the others too, then?”

Hades grumbled, knowing the price his nephew was extorting from him, “Out of my sight,  _ pheletes.” _

“Hey now, uncle, it’s not  _ thievery, _ it’s payment,” Hermes twirled his caduceus in his nimble fingers, “Loyalty can be bought and paid for just like anything else.”

Hades forced himself to overlook that the fleet-footed God had just offered aid to his rebellious son, he knew the young god’s silver tongue carried far and wide.

“Fine. A hundred gemstones, no more, and you will make yourself scarce from my sight,” Hades growled, speaking the debt into existence, knowing it would carry over to another mountain of paperwork for himself. 

“Oh yes, sir, I will make sure I am not within sight next time Zagreus makes it to the surface,” Hermes winked and was gone. 

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> I have no explanation for why Hermes is here .


End file.
